“Killing In The Name” was the lead-off single from Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 self-titled debut album. The track became a major US hit, and RATM became an icon of 90s alternative music—their one-of-a-kind fusion of rap, rock, metal, and funk with rebellious explicit lyrics was addictive ear candy. I was in high school in the mid 90s, and Rage Against The Machine was a staple—you heard them everywhere. Killing In The Name reached no. 25 on the UK Singles Chart in 1992.

Fast-forward 17 years. 2009. Two RATM fans, Jon and Tracy Morter, decide that it’s time for X-Factor’s dominating influence on the Christmas UK Single to end. They launch a Facebook group and page dubbed ratm4xmas and amass half a million fans in a matter of weeks with a simple agenda: “Fed up of Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas No.1? Purchase Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ on Christmas Week as a protest.” They pull it off. Killing In The Name hits the no. 1 spot and it sets a record as being the first song to hit no. 1 through downloads alone. Compare back to 1992 when the single only hit no. 25 and realize that in today’s music world, the fans want to take the power back.

Bill Burton: “Sometimes we limit ourselves by what we believe we can do. We don’t even start. We don’t even try.” Burton delivered this powerful point in his TEDx talk last week, called How To Have A Christmas Number One Single, where, citing RATM’s rise to UK Xmas no. 1, he exemplified the boundless force of social media, and, through a storytelling memorization activity, he demonstrated the limitless—but often unrealized—potential of the human mind. Nothing is impossible.

Dec. ’09 Press

More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music. It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the show’s creator Cowell who angrily described the campaign to deny him another number one slot as “very Scrooge”. (The Independent)

Personally, I’d love RATM to get to No 1, not because I think it would be a victory for “proper” rock. I actually think a RATM victory would be a triumph for pop. The song might be old, but having a fan-powered campaign propel it to the chart summit against the might of an entertainment powerhouse like SyCo would tell you more about the democratised, downloadable and downright free-for-all nature of the pop charts in 2009 than anything else. (The Guardian)